Socio(pathic) Skills; the dark tangent of Student-Centred Learning?

I admit it; I was in school at a time when the 60s generation free thinking was not a rebellious idea, but a norm – both inside and outside the classroom – and communism was in vogue among intellectuals and teachers. Openness, freedom and critique of Le Ancien Régime was part and parcel of the pedagogic 5-year plan.

It is with a sense of deep shame I now admit that my class absolutely terrorized our teachers – as I remember it, several refused to teach us, some actually fled the class, others wept, one immigrated to Greenland – and I remember us openly quoting the law against physical punishment and children’s rights to further taunt  our impotent and furious adversaries.* In the words of Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap, “Self-expression and the creative process ruled.”

One of my classmates was the son of two divorced hippies, which had…